Language change questions

What are the main reasons for language change?

External factors play a significant role in language change. As society develops, the language  needs to adapt  to keep up with these changes.

The changing social climate:

• From the time of the Norman Conquest, England followed a strictly feudal system

• From the late 15th century, feudalism began to decline but clear division of class remained

• The industrial revolution saw increased urbanisation and the emergence of a new middle class

• The middle classes were conscious of their language. Many dictionaries, pronunciation guides and grammar guides were published during the 18th and 19th centuries, advising members of this new social group of ‘correct’ language usage

• The Elementary Education Act of 1870 was passed, providing compulsory education for all children aged between 5 and 12; thus literacy greatly improve

Additional external factors-

• Increased contact with a worldwide community:

• the 20th century has seen two world wars, both of which exposed the language to contact with countries from around the world, including America and colonial and post-colonial countries such as Australia, Canada, India.

• Post- war affluence has led to rise in travel and increased contact with other cultures and experiences, resulting in extensive borrowing

• The rise in technology has resulted in communication on a global scale

Why do words change meaning?

External factors-

- Such as cultural changes, technological innovation or social convention may affect how a word is used. E.g the rise of technology has seen development in words such as: virus, bug, crash, windows

-          Changing social ideas can mean that a need for a new term arises, such as LGBT (lesbian, gender, bisexual and transgender) to replace words that are no longer acceptable

-          Cultural changes can result in the broadening or bleaching of a word as the original usage loses significance

Internal factors can also affect semantic change-

-          The basic meaning of a word can be linked to some similarity, either a specific attribute or an abstract concept. E.g. an actual virus can be likened to a computer virus.

What are the ways in which language changes?

• Shifting meanings (semantic shift)- word changes meaning over time
• e.g.  The meaning of ‘fond’ has ameliorated (become more positive over time), moving from fairly negative semantics to more positive.

• Neosemy: the process whereby a new meaning develops for an existing word

Processes involved with neosemy:

• Generalisation/broadening- The meaning of a word broadens so that it retains its old meaning but also has new meanings       

• Specialising/narrowing-The opposite of broadening – a word becomes more specific in meaning:
•  Meat- the Old English ‘mete’ used to mean food in general but now refers to a specific type of food

• Amelioration-Over time a word acquires a more pleasant or more positive meaning;
• Pretty- used to mean sly or cunning

• Pejoration-  The opposite of amelioration – over time a word becomes less favourable:
• Villain- used to mean farm worker

• Weakening/bleaching-The loss of reduction of the force of meaning of a word:

• Euphemism- polite form of expressions for things that may be considered unpleasant
•    E.g. he passed away instead of ‘he died’

• Polysemy- words acquire many possible meanings, which coexist with the original: Milk/milking it: where ‘milking it’ has evolved from the verb ‘to milk’ in its original sense

What are they key influential factors on the development of English as accessible to all?

What is the difference between a prescriptive and descriptive attitude to language use?

Prescriptive- the notion that language should be fixed, prescribing to a set standard of rules for language uses, with any shift away from these rules or standards being seen as incorrect

Descriptive- where no judgement or negative attitude is imposed on language change, but an examination of language as it is and how it is used

John Humphrys 'I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-483511/I-h8-txt-msgs-How-texting-wrecking-language.html

Jean Aitcheson:

3 Metaphors:

Damp Spoon

Crumbling Castle

Infectious disease

What did Johnson think were the problems with his dictionary? Are these problems still evident in dictionaries today?

Theories for world Englishes

Theories for English;

Theory associated with world English’s:

-          

   Kachru’s circle of English (1992)

 

Expanding- EFL – English foreign language

Outer- ESL- English second language

Inner- EL1- main language English

Inner circle- the total number of English speakers in the inner circle is as high as 380million, of whom some 120 million are outside the US

Outer circle- includes countries where English is not the native tongue, but is important for historical reasons and plays a part in the nations institutions, either as an official language or otherwise. The total number of English speakers in the outer circle is estimate to range from 150 million to 300 million

Expanding circle- encompasses those countries where English plays no historical or governmental role, but where it is nevertheless widely used as a foreign language or lingua france. The total in this expanding circle is the most difficult to estimate, especially because English may be employed for specific, limited purposes, usually business English. The estimates of these users range from 100 million to one billion.

-        The inner circle (UK, US etc) is ‘norm-providing’. That means that English language norms are developed in these countries- English language is the first language there.

-    The outer circle is ‘norm-developing’

-     Expanding circle- ‘norm dependent’ because it relies on the standards set by native speakers in the inner circle

2. Edgar Schneider’s developmental stages for new varieties of English

Underlying principles

Five underlying principles underscore the dynamic model:

The closer the contact (language contact), higher the degree of bilingualism, multilingualism in a community, the stronger the effects of contact

•     The structural effects of language contact depend on social conditions. Therefore, history will play an important part

• 2)      Contact induced changes can  be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, from code-switching (occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties in the context of a single conversation) to code alternation to acquisition strategies (language acquisition usually refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants’ acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages

• 3)      Language evolution, and the emergence of contact induced varieties, can be regarded as speakers making selections from a pool of linguistic variants made available to them.

• 4)      Which features will be ultimately adopted depends on the complete ‘ecology’ of the contact situation, including factors such as demography, social relationships, and surface similarities between languages etc.

• The dynamic model outlines five major stages of the evolution of world English’s. These stages will take into account the prescriptives from the two major parties of agents- settlers (STL) and indigenous residents (IDG). Each phase is defined by four parameters

• 1.       Extralinguistic factors (e.g historical events)
• 2.       Characteristic identity constructions for both parties
• 3.       Sociolingustic determinants of contact setting
• 4.       Structural effects that emerge